the passports with a brief statement of the fact that his secretary had declined to receive them, and we parted with a look of mutual dislike and suspicion. We were destined shortly to meet again under circumstances that would deepen his suspicion and my dislike.
With the coöperation of Mr. Martiánof and Mr. Kléments we made the acquaintance in the course of the next three or four days of nearly all the political exiles in the place, and found among them some of the most interesting and attractive people we as yet had met in Siberia. Among those with whom we became best acquainted were Mr. Ivánchin-Písaref, a landed proprietor from the province of Yároslav; Dr. Martínof, a surgeon from Stávropol; Iván Petróvich Belokónski, a young author and newspaper man from Kiev; Leonídas Zhebunóf, formerly a student in the Kiev university; Miss Zenaïd Zatsépina, and Dmítri Kléments. The wives of Dr. Martínof and Mr. Ivánchin-Písaref were in exile with them; both spoke English, and in their hospitable houses we were so cordially welcomed and were made to feel so perfectly at home that we visited them as often as we dared. Dr. Martínof was a man of wealth and culture, and at the time of his arrest was the owner of a large estate near Stávropol in the Caucasus. When he was banished his property was put into the hands of an administrator appointed by the Minister of the Interior, and he was allowed for his maintenance a mere pittance of fifty dollars a month. He had never had a judicial trial, and had never been deprived legally of any of his civil rights; and yet by order of the Tsar his estate had been taken away from him and he had been banished by administrative process, with his wife and child, to this remote part of Eastern Siberia. He was not allowed at first even to practise his profession; but this the Minister of the Interior finally gave him permission to do. Some time in December, 1885, a few weeks before we reached Minusínsk, a man knocked at Dr. Martínof's door late one night and
